Solving For Imaginary Numbers
by Jedi Buttercup
Summary: To a mind trained to pluck at every loose thread, Blake's story was so obviously a false front that it was beginning to make John wonder if it was hiding something else altogether.


**Title**: Solving For Imaginary Numbers

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Rating**: K+

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not.

**Summary**: _To a mind trained to pluck at every loose thread, Blake's story was so obviously a false front that it was beginning to make John wonder if it was hiding something else altogether._ 2000 words.

**Spoilers**: Indeterminate season of POI; post-movie for Sorcerer's Apprentice

**Notes**: Originally posted elsewhere April 12, 2014. For milady78, for Day 8 in Wishlist 2013, for the prompt "Sorcerer's Apprentice/Person of Interest. Balthazar + Reese + Finch, the Machine gives Balthazar's number". Stands alone, but effectively set in the same world as my earlier story "Persistent Illusions".

* * *

John Reese watched from a convenient vantage point as the newest Number emerged from a narrow storefront across the street. The words _Arcana Cabana_ were painted in gold leaf over the door; smaller words at the bottom of the dusty window advised the public that it was _Established 1888_ and that visitors should enter _By Appointment Only_.

It should have been obvious to anyone who'd walked by the building before 2010, or visited the store's previous location since 2001, that the legend wasn't entirely true. But when John had asked the neighbors of both stores about the intervening decade, no one had seemed to have any idea what he was talking about. The Arcana Cabana had simply always been there, perpetually presided over by various Balthazar Blakes: uncles and fathers, nephews and sons, passing the name down through the decades. The most anyone remembered was that it had been dustier than usual for awhile.

_'Oh, that store with all the old swords and curio cabinets and ivory skulls? I think every kid in the city must have stared through those windows at least once. Never quite had the courage to make an appointment; though maybe I should, now that I think about it. I'm sure there'd be something in there that Grandpa George would love, and it gets harder to find the old guy Christmas presents every year.'_

It was strange; especially since the city's records were so clear-cut. According to Finch, the last owner of the original Arcana Cabana had disappeared without a trace in 2000 after a class of ten-year-old school kids had passed through the area. There'd been some kind of disturbance there with a child who'd wandered away from his group, and when the authorities had tried to follow up with Blake at the child's mother's behest he'd been nowhere to be found.

Over the next few years the store's stock had been sold, the building re-rented, and the man's personal belongings placed in storage 'for my nephew' in compliance with documents left with his lawyers. Until yet another Balthazar Blake of a nearly identical description had come to repossess his belongings and open a store with the same name in a new location, there'd been no further record of him. And as far as everyone seemed to be concerned... it was as though the first Blake had never left. The two men had different social security numbers, but everything else about them was exactly the same.

Except for one thing: the new Blake was ten years younger than his supposed uncle. To the day.

None of those curious facts had helped with trying to uncover who might be trying to harm the man, or whether he might be trying to harm someone else- but it all added to the air of mystery. Nothing about the current Balthazar Blake made any sense. His history, his eccentric wardrobe choices, the oddities surrounding his address of record, even the fact that his wife had only electronic records to back up her existence before the summer of 2010: all of it seemed to point to a flimsily constructed cover in which someone had gone overboard with too-unique details in an effort to give it realistic texture.

Amateurs always did that; they spent so much time trying to come up with a good story that they wanted to show off their attention to detail. But all that detail did was stand out in the mind of the listener, the more so the more unusual the specifics were. To a mind trained to pluck at every loose thread, Blake's story was so obviously a false front that it was beginning to make John wonder if it was hiding something else altogether- to make any observers look in exactly the wrong direction in search of the truth.

All in all, he was inclined to lean toward potential perpetrator; except for the matter of Blake's on-again, off-again shop assistant, Dave Stutler, a twenty-year-old physics genius with a fresh bachelor's degree and a complete inability to conceal any of the thoughts or emotions that passed through his highly distractible, energetic mind. And incidentally, the same child from that long-ago police report. John had only spoken to him very briefly, but that had been more than enough to get his measure, and he just didn't _fit_ into the rest of Blake's secretive world. The boy's pretty blonde student girlfriend seemed even more out of place there.

The assistant in question stormed out of the shop into John's range of view only a few seconds behind Blake, slamming the door shut behind him. "Look," he said loudly, in a voice that would have carried to John's ears even without the help of the cloning program on the kid's phone. "If you would just..."

"No, Dave," Blake replied, without even turning around, patently unconcerned in his rejection.

"C'mon!" the kid yelled, thrashing his arms around in an overflow of frustrated emotion as he tagged after Blake. "Think about this from _my_ perspective. The guy almost killed you! He almost killed _me!_"

Blake did turn at that, slowing in his stalk down the sidewalk to raise an eyebrow in Dave's direction. "Did he, now."

"Well, _you_, at least! _Me_ he just taunted until Horvath showed up, but _still_. I'm supposed to just pretend we're all on the same side now?"

John's ears perked up at the new name; it sounded vaguely familiar, from the other research Finch had done on Blake. He tapped his Bluetooth earpiece. "Finch, you hearing this?"

"_Mmm, running the name now_," Finch replied, distractedly, over Blake's answer.

"We _are_ on the same side now," Blake chided the boy. "Or have you forgotten what Horvath did to _him_ before he came back for us?"

"Ugh, _fine_, but I still don't see why I have to _learn_ from him." Dave slouched forward at that, thrusting his hands in the pockets of his jeans, the very picture of teenage resignation. "Can't you just stay here? I know you were out of things for awhile, but there's this thing called the _Internet_ now that'll let you do research long distance, and I know it's not technology that's the problem. You don't have any problem with cell phones."

Blake gave Dave another amused, sidelong look, just as they reached the limit of the range John could watch from his perch. "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave," he said, in a voice carefully without inflection.

Dave flared up again at that, spluttering and waving his arms as they passed out of sight. "You're screwing with me, aren't you? Balthazar? Balthazar!"

The argument continued as John packed his gear back up; Dave annoyed about something and Blake calmly refusing to engage. No more names were dropped, though, or specifics that Finch could look up.

"Harold?" he prompted his partner again as he descended the stairs, deciding to try the door of the shop one more time- it hadn't looked like the kid had locked it on his way out.

"_There are eighty-five people surnamed Horvath living in New York City alone_," Finch reported pensively, "_though it seems likely that the Horvath in question here is none of the above; rather, the Maxim Horvath mentioned as a person of interest in conjunction with a cold case from 2010, a near-fatal assault reported by a popular entertainer named Drake Stone._"

That case didn't sound familiar to John; but then, he doubted Finch remembered it first-hand, either. They'd both been a little busy surviving their own near-death experiences that year.

"Maxim?" he repeated, wryly.

"_Apparently_," Finch confirmed. "_Though I can find no supporting documents- the case trails off into a maze of loose threads, unusual considering the identity of the investigating officer. Detective Beckett's record usually compares quite favorably with Detective Carter's._"

John suppressed a wince. "I assume you've already looked up the Drake Stone connection- could that be the 'him' Stutler referred to?"

"_Possible, though I hardly think it likely. Detective Fusco is following up on that report with the Twelfth; I'll let you know if any further details turn up. I assume you're trying the shop again?_"

John was just walking up the steps to the shop door, in fact; he held his breath, then touched a gloved hand to its surface, and let the breath out again at the quiescence of the wood under his palm. It had been electrified somehow the first time he'd come by; his entire hand had gone numb and he'd tasted coconuts for hours. A quick jiggle of the handle still didn't get him anywhere, though, and when he slid a set of picks out of his pocket and set the first one to the lock, it stuck just as fast as last time, as though the lock had been filled with some kind of invisible, intangible cement.

"I wish I knew who they contracted for security; I've never seen anything like this."

"_Neither have I,_" Finch mused, "_nor even any mention of it- and I find that far more alarming._"

"I'll head for the kid's lab, then," he sighed. "Have you found a map of the subway tunnels, yet?"

"_Unfortunately not. I'll be certain to let you know when I do_," Finch replied, tone shifting to frustration, then went silent again on the other end of the connection.

John sighed, then moved away from the shop, hands deep in the pockets of his coat as he headed down the street to his car.

The streets were filled with the usual bustle; nothing stood out to his eye, and Blake's conversation with his assistant in his earpiece had faded to the same sort of crowd noise as they headed for their own destination. There was nothing, really, competing for his attention-

-except that abruptly, something about his distracted emotional state and the complete _lack_ of anything interesting going on around him seemed very important, indeed.

John turned sharply on his heel, just in time to catch sight of a third, unfamiliar man exiting the Arcana Cabana, turning in the same direction Blake and the kid- and John- had headed. He was tall, with dark, close-cropped hair, a mustache, and a twill overcoat with a fur collar; he held a walking stick with a jeweled knob in one hand, and was settling a bowler hat on his head with the other. He looked as though he'd walked out of the pages of a history book... and the world seemed to freeze for a long moment as his dark eyes met John's.

Abruptly, and inexplicably, John's heart began racing in his chest, adrenaline suddenly dumped into his system as though he'd been pinned under the gaze of an alpha predator. It didn't make any sense; he was usually the one that inspired that response in _other_ people, and nothing about the stranger's appearance should have triggered his instincts in such a drastic fashion. For a long moment, he couldn't move... while the stranger pursed his lips, raising the walking stick to point in John's direction.

Then a delivery truck of some kind abruptly pulled into a driveway between them, breaking the stare-down, and a shudder went up John's spine. He felt as though he'd suddenly surfaced from a too-long plunge in a cold lake, and got off the street as quickly as he could.

"_Mr. Reese? ...Mr. Reese_?"

"I think I may have just met this Horvath," John replied, roughly.

Too many things still didn't add up about Balthazar Blake. But in comparison with _that_? John had no frame of reference for what his instincts were telling him, but if the stranger was the other half of the situation that had prompted the Machine to send Blake's number, he was no longer surprised at all the dead-ends in their investigation. Most people would be strongly tempted to stick their heads in the sand after an encounter like that.

Interesting that Stone had reported the assault at all, then.

Perhaps that had better be his next visit, instead.

-x-


End file.
